Daily Archives: May 3, 2010

The rabid right wing of the Republican party saw Bob McDonnell’s election as a road to the past, restoring the shameful and restrictive policies of the Old South to the Old Dominion.

Now they’re not so sure.

“He clearly cannot be trusted,” Joe Glover, a Republican activist who lives near Lynchburg and heads the Family Policy Network, a Christian advocacy group, tells The Washington Post. “He’s clearly not the conservative he would like conservatives to think he is. I will not make the mistake of voting for Bob McDonnell again.”

Clearly, the gov has made a few missteps that does not fall into the stone-age policies of the far right. He had the gall to appoint some moderates to his administration, bitch-slapped attorney general Ken Cuccinelli for his ill-conceived memo telling state colleges and universities and memos to ignore equality for gays and actually apologized for failing to mention the shame of slavery in his questionable restoration of Confederate History Month.

What is McDonnell thinking? Doesn’t he know that acting like a decent human being is not something the rabid right wants in an elected official.

After eight years of Democratic rule, Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell was seen by conservatives as a political savior, someone who would restore the state’s right-leaning policies and traditions. But less than four months into his term, many conservatives have grown disenchanted, even as he has made direct appeals to causes they care about.

Two recent high-profile efforts to cater to parts of the conservative coalition — declaring April as Confederate History Month and slashing funding for Planned Parenthood — only further agitated many.

McDonnell’s failure to mention slavery in the Confederate proclamation led to a cycle of national ridicule followed by an apology from the governor, dampening whatever boost he might have gotten. And although McDonnell removed most state funding from Planned Parenthood, he stopped short of his campaign promise to cut all funds from the nation’s largest abortion provider, leaving many social conservatives feeling let down.

“Bob McDonnell is a typical politician trying to please both sides of the aisle and hopes that you and I are naive enough to buy it,” read an e-mail sent to supporters of Virginians for Life last month that also called the governor “gutless.”

McDonnell may turn out to have a heart and a conscience — and there just ain’t any place for that in the world of extreme right-wing politics.

Virginia’s latest national embarassment — attorney general Ken Cuccinelli — is at it again.

Now he wants to cover up a bare breast on the Virginia State seal.

Cuccinelli recently distributed new lapel pins to his staff with the breast-baring tunic worn by Roman goddess Virtus replaced with an armored breastplate that covers her charms.

The AG first claimed Virginia needed a “more modest” state seal. Now he says the whole thing was a joke.

It’s a joke all right but it is Cuccinelli and his antics that has turned him into a national joke.

“When you ask to be ridiculed, it usually happens,” Virginia political science professor Larry Sabato told the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot. “And it will happen here, nationally. This is classical art for goodness sake.”

Cuccinelli has already brought national attention and shame on the Old Dominion with his incredible memo advising state colleges and universities to ignore laws that prohibit discrimination against gays.

That was so off-the-wall that even brother-in-arms governor Bob McDonnell moved quickly to offset the memo.

Cuccinelli’s coverup is not the first time a right-winger has tried to impose his own puritanical revision on symbols. In 2002, U.S. Attorney John Ashcroft ordered partially nude statues at the Justice Department covered.

“Ashcroft had one excuse: it hadn’t been done before and he wasn’t prepared for the critical onslaught that he faced,” Sabato told the Virginian-Pilot “Cuccinelli has no excuse at all. He knows what’s coming because of what happened to Ashcroft. You can only conclude that he enjoys being the center of pointless controversy.”